1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus for continuously performing various treatments, such as drying, steam heating, washing and dyeing, over a tape-like article such as a surface fastener, a slide fastener chain or an ornamental ribbon efficiently and uniformly.
2. Description of the Related Art
An apparatus for drying starched yarns, which are wound spirally around an endless belt assembly of many endless belts arranged along the circumference of a rotary framework at predetermined distances in parallel to a rotating shaft of the rotary framework, while the starched yarns are running continuously from one turning end portion side to the other turning portion side of the endless belts of the endless belt assembly, is known as disclosed in, for example, Japanese Utility Model Publication NO. SHO 49-12844. According to this prior art dryer, through compact in size, it is possible to secure adequate drying time and to perform continuous drying in such a manner that the starched yarns are kept from overlapping one another.
Although it can be applied also to the treatment of the tape-like article, the prior art apparatus has not yet been of practical use for the following reasons.
In general, the treatment of a tape-like article does not terminate only in a single step, but in various steps. For example, a surface fastener tape, like a cloth product, is provided with various treatments, such as dyeing, steam heating, washing, drying and heat-setting. In addition, when stickiness is to be given to the back side of the surface fastener tape, it requires additional steps for continuously coating an adhesive agent to the back side of the surface fastener tape and then attaching a peel sheet to the coated surface. Generally a step of drying the adhesive agent is provided between the coating step and the peel-sheet attaching step.
Thus a tape-like article is processed with, in addition to the foregoing kinds of treatments, various treating steps. In order to guarantee the quality of a final product after these steps, it is most important to perform quality management for every step and, more particularly, exact tension adjustment of the running tape-like article. For example, when fluctuation in tension of the tape-like article is great in the drying step between the coating step and the peel-sheet attaching step, the coated surface would be wavy rather than smooth so that the peel sheet cannot be attached to the entire coated surface uniformly.
According to a yarn feeding mechanism of the drying apparatus disclosed in the above-mentioned publication, a yarn is wound spirally around the endless belt assembly of many endless belts arranged along the polygonal circumference of the rotary framework, while the yarn is running continuously from one turning portion side to the other turning portion side of the endless belts of the endless belt assembly. Therefore, unlike the case that the yarn is wound around a rotating cylindrical support surface, the amounts of fed yarn and discharged yarn vary time to time to cause great fluctuations in yarn tension. Conventionally, it has been customary to use a dancer roller in an effort to absorb such tension fluctuations; however, tension control merely using a dancer roller would not be effective in absorbing periodical and large tension fluctuations and hence would not follow the tension fluctuation of the yarn.
Meanwhile, tension control in various kinds of treatments of a tape-like article is fairly influential on the possible final product, and management of the tension would be severe as compared to the management of yarn tension. Though it has many advantages as mentioned above, the yarn feeding mechanism could not be put into practical use in an apparatus for providing a tape-like article with various treatments.